Tina Turner's Mad Max Role Extends Beyond Her Villainous Character

George Miller's "The Road Warrior" (aka "Mad Max 2") is a perfect action movie from a filmmaker unencumbered by convention. The film opens with a hallucinatory, newsreel-like recap of the first movie shot in the boxy academy ratio. This sequence reframes the post-apocalyptic realism of "Mad Max" as the stuff of cinematic myth. Mel Gibson's Max is no longer just a cop driven to extrajudicial means due to the murder of his family. He's a man of the Outback, a hard-driving drifter in search of petrol and food. And once this prelude concludes, we are thrust into the widescreen expanse of Max's open-road existence. It's one of the most exhilarating transitions in the whole of cinema history.

"The Road Warrior" was also a global hit, which necessitated a third film. "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" would be a full-scale studio production with twice the budget of the previous movie. It had to clear the highest of bars, which meant topping the propulsive opening of "The Road Warrior." How could you possibly do this? You cast Tina Turner, and let the Queen of Rock and Roll do her royally spectacular thing.

I'll never forget watching "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" at Bowling Green, Ohio's Cinema 1 & 2. Once the trailers finished, the Warner Bros. logo came up sans fanfare. Then the music hit. Turner's "We Don't Need Another Hero" was already a Billboard-charting single, but we hadn't heard "One of the Living" yet. When that song exploded from the theater's speakers, with the opening titles coming at us with an ominous intensity, we knew we were in for a banger of a movie. I was pinned to my seat. Sometimes I throw "Beyond Thunderdome" on just to watch these credits.

Turner gets second billing behind Gibson, but once the film kicks in, she owns every scene. Her portrayal of Auntie Entity gives "Beyond Thunderdome" an erotic charge. She's turned on by Gibson's "raggedy man," and his stoic act makes us distrust him. When Tina Turner's coming at you like this, you either succumb or you're, well, a cop.

The film builds up a wild head of steam early on, but loses momentum when Max escapes Bartertown. The Captain Walker subplot is Spielberg-lite, but the real problem is Turner disappears from the movie for an intolerably long time. Maurice Jarre's gooey score sands down the craggy edges of Turner's presence. Bring back the GOAT!

The movie recovers during its vroom-vroom third act, but you're left wishing Turner had played a more significant, complicated role in the narrative. Her music and inimitable voice snares us in the opening seconds. How do you get away from that?

No one did life better than Tina Turner. I wish she'd made more movies. But like a master seductress, she knew to tantalize us. And now that she's gone, that ache hurts tenfold.